On my way to Rainbow Grocery yesterday, a lovely Saturday afternoon in San Francisco, I spent a few moments on the Folsom Street sidewalk chatting with Broke Ass Stuart Schuffman. Like me, he was a candidate for mayor and was on ballot, while I was a write-in hopeful.
Collectively, all challengers to Ron Conway's puppet-mayor Ed Lee garner 43 percent of the vote. This achievement happened without any help from slimy Tim Redmond, formerly of the dead Bay Guardian rag and now providing stenography PR for his small circle of buddies.
Redmond gave scant pre-election attention to Schuffman, Green Party candidate Francisco Herrera and Amy Weiss who together waged a successful "1-2-3: Anyone But Ed Lee" strategy, which he very begrudgingly, after knocking each of the three, sorta endorsed with caveats. But I digress.
I asked Schuffman why he wasn't identified by his alias Broke-Ass Stuart on election materials, as was write-in challenger Karla Gottschalk. As shown on the preliminary vote totals, she got an "a.k.a Belle Starr" identification after he name.
Schuffman was unaware she had this privilege and he said Gregory P. Slocum of the Elections Department told him aliases weren't not allow by law, and he wondered if there were different ballot listing requirements for those on the ballot versus write-ins.
Not sure and mentioned that Slocum told me, after I inquired about Gottschalk's alias at least on the results, that Schuffman hadn't requested being identified as Broke Ass Stuart. He could have racked up a few more votes with that well-known designation of his.
Here's hoping Schuffman uses his status as a mayoral candidate to stay engaged with the San Francisco political world.
Lastly, John Arntz, the director of the Elections Department informed me on Friday that he hopes on Monday to have preliminary breakdown figures for the 453 write-in votes cast. Who knew San Francisco officials need almost a full week to count write-ins?
My friend Patrick Monette-Shaw had trouble posting this note, so I'm sharing it on his behalf:
ReplyDeleteAw, geez, hell, Michael. When I saw the words "compromising” and “fascinating” I fully expected to see multiple Anyone-But-Lee candidates naked in a shower, à la Frank Jordan! So imagine my surprise seeing you and Broke-Ass Stuart fully clothed. I had hoped for something more lurid. You sure know how to disappoint lurid-seeking folks like me.
Keen insights you raise. I’ll be submitting a records request to Mr. Arntz this afternoon asking him to explain a disturbing phenomena on the election results that have been posted and updated since November 3.
Specifically, when the first election results were posted on the Elections web site Tuesday, November 3 at 22:36:13, the summary at the top indicated a total of 132,262 ballots had been cast between vote-by-mail, and at ballot boxes on election date. But strangely the election results reported that day/time showed there were 133,702 ballots cast for Prop “A.” How could there have been 1,440 more votes have been cast for Prop. “A” than the total ballots cast at the top of the summary? Does Arntz’s staff have problems with basic math?
By Friday, November 6 when an update was posted on Elections’ web site at 16:15:15, the summary at the top showed total ballots cast had climbed to 172,153, and that the Prop “F” Airbnb measure had totaled 175,213 ballots cast. Again, no explanation of how there could have been 3,060 more ballots cast for Prop “F” than for the overall summary at the top of the page.
I look forward to Arntz’s next elections result update showing the preliminary breakdown of the 453 write-in votes cast for Mayor. But those 453 ballots don’t appear to account for the 1,440 ballot discrepancy on Election night, nor the 3,060 ballot discrepancy that had surfaced by November 6.
No wonder it’s called “Silly Hall.”
I look forward to seeing your number of write in votes. And I have to wonder if some of my fan club wrote me in as a write-in candidate again this year, even though I wasn’t a formal write-in candidate like you. They did that in 2011 when I also hadn’t been a formal write-in candidate then, either.
Best,
Patrick Monette-Shaw
www.stopLHHdownsize.com